2004/10/01 by Pehr Granqvist, Lee A. Kirkpatrick · 2 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Attachment theory #Compensation (psychology) #Developmental psychology #Marriage and Sexual Relationships #Meta-analysis #Psychology #Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology #Social psychology #Work (physics)
paper · doi:10.1207/s15327582ijpr1404_1
openalex publication_date 2004/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In this article we review previous work on religious conversions, relate this work to attachment system dynamics, and present a meta-analysis of results from 11 cross-national questionnaire studies (N = 1465) that have investigated links between religious conversions and perceived childhood attachment history with parents. Two general hypotheses derived from attachment theory were tested. Based on the compensation hypothesis, it was predicted that sudden religious conversions would be associated on average with insecure, rather than secure, attachment histories. Based on the 2-level correspondence hypothesis, it was predicted that nonsudden conversions and gradual religious changes would be associated with a secure attachment history. Both predictions were supported in the meta-analyses, with small to medium effect sizes. It was concluded that attachment theory is a valuable framework for integrating previous findings and guiding future research on religious conversions, but that several methodological improvements should be made in future research.